


Sneeze Three Times

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Preseries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-15
Updated: 2007-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't close his eyes; that would be stupid, because closing your eyes doesn't make the monsters go away anyhow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sneeze Three Times

**Author's Note:**

> Timeframe: preseries (pre-shtriga)  
> Disclaimer: They belong to Eric "Now" Kripke and the CW (I made up Pete, though).
> 
> a/n: "Hound Dog" is by Elvis Presley. Title is from the poem "Beware, My Child" by Shel Silverstein. Heffalumps belong to A.A. Milne. Big thank you to janissa11 for the terrific beta read.

It snows all day, so they stay inside and Dean reads to Sam while they lie sprawled on the rug in the living room. The farmhouse where they're staying is cold, frost nestling in the corners of the windows, so Sam and Dean are wearing two sweaters each. It's too dark to see anything outside now, but even earlier all Dean could see was trees and snowy fields.

The place belongs to Pete, a friend of Dad's who had asked them to keep an eye on the property while he was away on a hunt. Pete was a big man with a round face and thick arms. He always laughed big, but sometimes his eyes were distant and sad, kind of the way Dad always started looking around Halloween.

It feels hazily familiar having a whole house they can run around in, upstairs and downstairs without worrying about being too loud for the neighbors. He and Sam each have their own room, although the last few nights they've slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the living room because that's where the fireplace is and it's warmer. Plus Sam probably feels safer that way and it's easier for Dean to keep an eye on him.

The fire is dying but still warm and Dean keeps getting distracted from the words he's reading out loud to Sam, staring at the glowing ashes at the bottom of the fireplace, the flames eating the log that's almost all gone.

Dad's sits in the armchair by the window, reading a thick leather-bound book that has hand-written pages in it instead of typed text. Sometimes he coughs or shifts in his chair, or scribbles something in the spiral notebook he has propped on the arm of the chair. Dean pauses in his reading to lift his head and try to look at what Dad's writing, but Dad's drawing now instead. Dean gets a glimpse of a pointy face and scary eyes and horns and fangs before Sam tugs on the sleeve of his sweater.

"Keep reading," Sam insists.

So Dean finishes the chapter, then yawns. "Let's play cards." He shuts the book. "I'll teach you how to play poker."

"No, you won't," Dad says calmly from his chair, not even looking up. He's still scribbling in the notebook.

Sam sits up, his sweater a little too big with the cuffs rolled up at his wrists. It was Dean's until last month. He's got rug hair -- one side of his head looking flattened, the other too puffy. Dean reaches out and ruffles it to make it even again.

"Dean," Sam says, frowning the way he does when he's really thinking about something. "There's no such thing as heffalumps, right?"

"No, of course not, dummy."

From the chair, Dad coughs, and Dean can read Dad's sounds same as he can read Sam's. This cough meant _think about what you're saying._

"I mean, they're only in the book." Dean speaks slowly, trying to be as precise as possible because Sam gets ideas in his head sometimes and then he gets nightmares or insists on opening every cabinet and closet door because there might be a boggart. "There aren't any legends about heffalumps. Dad's never heard of any heffalumps and neither has Pete or Caleb or Jim."

"Okay." Sam draws his knees up and rests his chin on them.

"Who are you, Piglet?" Dean pokes Sam with his foot.

"Stoppit," says Sam.

"Stop what?" Dean pokes him again.

Sam scootches over on the rug away from him. "Dean!"

"Boys," says Dad, and peers sharply at Dean over the book. "It's getting late. Time for bed."

"Can we sleep down here again?" Dean asks.

"If you want." Dad closes his book and gathers up his notebook and his pen. He picks up another log and throws it on the fire. Sparks rise up with a little swirl of ash.

* * *

It's real quiet at Pete's place, especially this late at night; the road's far away at the end of a long gravel driveway covered in snow. Dean lies on his stomach in his sleeping bag, staring into the last embers of the fire.

Sam's urgent whisper carries like a shout across the still, cold room. "Dean!"

Dean sits up, spies the empty sleeping bag next to him, and looks over at the window. Sam is kneeling on the wooden bench, staring outside, his bare feet sticking out behind him. Dean thinks his feet are probably cold, but no matter how many times Dean reminds him, Sam can't seem to keep socks on his feet. The snow has stopped but it's still hard to see anything outside.

He kicks off the sleeping bag, rustling in the quiet, and walks over to the window. "What the heck're you doing?" Dean kneels on the bench beside his brother. The long underwear he's wearing is itchy; Dean squirms and scratches at his lower back.

"I saw a heffalump."

"Sammy..." Dean huffs out an annoyed breath.

"Out there." Sam points at the window. With the light in the hallway on, the panes reflect them back faintly as if they're ghosts.

"You saw something, probably a fox or a coyote or a racoon," says Dean. His warm breath fogs against the glass as he leans forward to see better.

"It was big." Sam holds his arms out wide, his hand bumping into Dean's chest. "It was a heffalump." His face is all creased up now, twisted with worry and pleading.

Putting his palm to the glass, Dean gives Sam his best reassure-Sammy smile. "I'll tell you what. Tomorrow morning we'll go outside and look for the heffalump. We'll find it and I'll kill it if there is one. Which there isn't. So you don't have to worry, either way, I've got it covered. Go back to sleep." Dean hops off the bench and pulls Sam off too, then marches him back to his sleeping bag.

Sam seems satisfied with that. They get back in their sleeping bags. After a little while Sam's breathing grows quiet and even. Only then does Dean fall asleep.

* * *

Dean explains over cereal the next morning why they're going out. Dad nods once, but doesn't say much and Dean gets a nagging worry in his stomach. He's done something wrong, but isn't sure what it is yet.

After breakfast Sam runs out of the kitchen, eager to get his boots and coat and go outside. The deep snow is bright under the sun and there's a sled on Pete's back porch.

Dad's hand comes down on Dean's shoulder. "Dean, what did you tell him?" He doesn't sound angry.

He repeats what he'd said to Sam, shrugging under the weight of Dad's hand. "It was the only way I could get him to go to sleep."

To Dean's relief, Dad's hand falls away and he smiles faintly. "All right. Go on your heffalump hunt."

As his father turns away, Dean wants to grab his wrist and ask him how anyone can know which monsters really are made up and which could be real. It's confusing but at least Dad seems to understand: maybe Sam will believe Dean about the heffalumps more if he doesn't say something that sounds like a lie.

Dean puts on his coat, boots, hat, and gloves, and follows Sam out to the porch.

"You don't need a sled on a hunt," says Dean.

The sled's the old-fashioned kind, with a wooden seat and metal runners and a rope for pulling. There are faded letters on the seat that say FLEXIBLE FLYER.

"It's for after the hunt," Sam says, struggling to drag the sled outside. With his scarf around his neck and his hat pulled over his forehead, hardly any of his face is visible, just his nose, mouth and eyes. "We're going to hunt on the way to the hill."

"Oh," says Dean, as if this should have been obvious from the start.

The porch door bangs shut behind them and they go down the rickety wooden steps. "Because we could sled down all the way back to the house," Sam adds, his eyes brightening as if he's found a brilliant solution to a hard problem.

The kid might be onto something. "Good plan." Dean tugs Sam's hat off his head and starts loping across the back lawn, towards the open fields behind the house.

"Hey!" Sam starts to run after him, but he's slowed by having to pull the sled.

Playing keep-away with Sam's hat is only fun for a few minutes. Dean dangles it enticingly towards Sam, who leaps to grab it, only to have Dean snatch it away. But after a while Sam's ears turn pink and his nose runs and he starts gasping for breath, struggling with the sled. So Dean tugs the hat back down over Sam's head and takes the sled rope.

They move along faster after that. "You have to look for tracks," Dean says, and turns his eyes to the ground. He glances sideways and sees Sam staring down intently at the snow ahead of them.

Dean looks back and sees the farmhouse looking small and lonely, just a little white box with darker trim against all the white snow all around, below them at the base of the hill. The woods are still ahead of them and to the right but there are trees here and there.

"And be careful where you step so you don't mess up a track ahead of you."

"What do we do if we _meet_ a heffalump?" Sam asks.

"Run," says Dean.

Sam looks real worried at that so Dean grabs up a handful of snow and drops it down the back of Sam's collar. Sam squeals and reaches back to clear the snow off, then grabs some snow himself and pitches it at Dean. But his throw is feeble.

"Pathetic," says Dean, clicking with his tongue. "We'll have to work on your arm."

They walk on and then Sam says, "Dean?"

"What."

"I'm tired."

"Oh for..." Dean stops and puts one mittened hand on his hip a moment. "Get on the sled." He motions with his other hand.

"Cool," says Sam, and hops on.

Dean starts pulling the sled. "You say 'mush' at me one time and you'll get another handful of snow down your neck. Got it?"

"Got it." Sam sits still on the sled, clutching the sides to keep his balance.

The sled runners make a crunching noise as they go across the snow. It was hard walking already, and now with the weight of Sam added to the sled, Dean's getting tired too. His shoulders start to ache and he's thirsty. He blinks, his eyes watering against the snow glare.

"Dean, tracks!" Sam shouts.

Dean drops the rope, grateful to rest. He rotates his left shoulder. "Where?"

Sam climbs off the sled and steps very carefully, one foot after the other, across the snow about four paces, then crouches. "Here."

Pulling his scarf up over his chin and nose, Dean breathes through the wool to warm up his face. Then he drops the end of the scarf, letting it trail down to his waist. He's not cold anymore; a prickle of sweat hits his forehead and his body, under his coat, all at once and is gone, leaving him cold again.

There's a print in the snow, a clear print, too large for a rabbit or a fox or anything else Pete told Dad might live out there. Dean kneels and holds his mitten down over the print, and it's bigger than his whole hand.

He glances up and sees another, and beyond that two more, but they're different, deep and round. Dean walks over to those, leaving Sam crouched behind him in the snow. There are more prints past those, crisscrossing up the hill. He squints and sees one line headed down the hill towards the house, another leading up again.

They look old, as if the creature had circled the house during the night, at some point after the snow stopped. His heart beats too fast and the silence of the winter around him becomes unbearable, pressing on his ears.

"Is it a heffalump?" Sam's voice breaks through.

Dean turns, takes several quick steps back to Sam, grabs Sam's arm, and pulls him to his feet. "We have to go back to the house, _now_."

"But what about the sled? Is it a heffalump? What kind of tracks are those?"

The sled's way behind them and Dean keeps moving quick as he can against the deep snow, hand closed tight around Sam's upper arm. His feet can't move fast enough. It's like one of those dreams he sometimes has where he's trying to run fast and doesn't get anywhere, stays in one place even though he's running his heart out.

They come down past a few lonely trees and that's when he sees it, poised at the edge of the woods with its head raised, tasting the wind. It's not as big as a horse, more pony-sized, its eyes dark and fierce above the beak, wings rising from its back. One powerful forepaw moves, lifting from the ground the way Dean has seen dogs do it when they've scented a squirrel.

He looks around for something to use as a weapon but there's nothing, just snow.

"Crouch down and be still," Dean orders. Sam obeys. Dean drops down next to him and starts digging, watching the hippogriff the whole time. Finally his mittens hits dirt. He keeps going and finds stones, tugging them free of the mud beneath the snow. Dean puts two in his pocket and holds one in each hand.

If they get up and run for the house, it will see them and chase them. He doesn't know much about hippogriffs except the name and what they look like, but Caleb knew a guy who ran across one once. Caleb said he survived but the scars he had were legendary.

Dean looks at Sam, crouching in the snow like a rabbit; Sam's seen it too now and his pupils have gone huge, his breathing fast.

"Listen to me." Dean fists his mitten around the stone and touches it to the top of Sam's head, making him turn to look at him. "When I tell you to go, run as fast as you can down the hill. Go get Dad. Run, don't look back."

"But D--"

"Shut up," Dean hisses. "Just do it."

Sam nods.

The hippogriff moves, stepping out away from the woods, head cocked to one side. Its wings twitch; it's scented them.

"Now," Dean whispers, and gives Sam a push.

As Sam starts to run down the hill, looking much too small as he fumbles through the snow, Dean runs uphill, across the hippogriff's line of vision.

"Hey!" He yells.

The thing's head whips around like an eagle's, looking for him. It moves slow and Dean guesses it's not real hungry or he'd be dead already -- it would pounce as if he were a mouse and that would be that. He feels the stones clutched in his fists but doesn't throw them. Angering it would be dangerous. The stones are just in case. All he wants to do is keep its eyes on him so it doesn't look downhill, and spot Sammy.

"Hey, you big ugly thing, look at me!" Dean waves his arms and jumps up and down.

The beast follows him. Dean walks backwards and it follows. The trees aren't that far behind him, he figures he can make it.

He risks a glance down the hill and sees Sam is almost at the house and faintly, Dean hears him screaming for Dad. He turns back to the hippogriff, then does the first thing he can think of to keep it distracted.

"You ain't nothin' but a hound dog," Dean sings.

The hippogriff cocks its head to one side and its beak opens slightly.

"Cryin' all the time."

Dean glances behind him and sees he's almost into the trees. He looks down and can't see Sam; maybe he's gotten into the house.

"You ain't nothin' but a hound dog."

The hippogriff takes another step towards him, its forepaws crunching in the snow. Now Dean has stepped under the trees, into the gloom. He stops singing, turns, and runs, hoping he'll get out of the creature's line of sight. Maybe hippogriffs don't see so well in daytime. He hopes.

One tree has enough low-hanging branches for him to use so he tucks the stones back into his pockets, reaches up, and pulls himself onto the first branch.

He goes as high as he can, snug in the fork of two branches. All he can do is wait. He wraps his arms around the tree, resting his cheek against the roughness of the bark.

Branches break as something large moves through the woods below him and Dean sucks in his breath and holds it, trying to make no sound, but he doesn't close his eyes; that would be stupid, because closing your eyes doesn't make the monsters go away anyhow.

The important thing is, Sammy's down at the house by now, safe.

The sounds move farther away, deeper into the woods. Dean slowly lets his breath out. His body grows stiff from being in one position, wedged up in that tree, and from the cold.

Finally he hears his father's voice calling his name.

For a moment Dean doesn't answer, afraid the monster is still nearby. Dad's voice gets louder and there are no other sounds, nothing much stirring except two blackbirds that startle, fluttering up to the winter sky.

"Up here," Dean calls, surprised at how choked his own voice sounds.

He can see Dad now, shotgun in hand, running towards Dean's tree.

"Where is it?" Is the first thing Dad says.

"I don't know," says Dean. "It went off to the east."

"All right. First let's get you down and back the house."

"Sam?" Dean says.

"He's inside. He's safe. He's safe."

Dean starts to lower himself from the tree but he's so stiff from being up there and his muscles move sluggishly. He hesitates on a lower branch. Usually that would be an easy jump down but his legs feel loose as limp rubber bands.

Leaning the shotgun against the tree trunk, Dad reaches up, grabs Dean's legs, and pulls gently. Dean lets go of the tree trunk. Instead of guiding Dean to the ground, Dad pulls Dean down into his arms. Dean's arms go around Dad's neck and they both hold on tight for a few seconds before Dad puts Dean down and picks up the shotgun.

He takes Dean back to the house first before going out to hunt the hippogriff.

* * *

They wait in the kitchen. Dean makes hot chocolate and adds extra marshmallows for both of them. He tries hard not to look at the clock over the stove, tries hard not to remember Caleb telling the story of the hunter who fought a hippogriff, how the scars _were this deep, like something had nibbled big pieces out of him_.

He sips the hot chocolate, swishing the strong, sweet flavor around in his mouth before swallowing. Sam lays his head down on the table, turned sideways with his cheek on the placemat, staring at Dean so hard it makes Dean want to cover Sam's eyes with his hand and ask him to stop staring already.

Finally, when the shadows are growing longer outside, they hear boots on the porch.

Dean jumps up first and runs, then slows when he gets near the door. When Dad walks in, stomping the remains of snow off his boots, Dean's standing at attention. "Did you get it?"

"I got it. Must have been what was picking off the livestock in the area; Pete mentioned something about it when he invited us out here. He thought it was a wildcat." He leans his shotgun carefully against the wall.

"Daddy!" Sam runs at their father, who picks Sam up easy and rests him comfortably on his hip.

"Never should have let you boys wander around outside alone," Dad says, then puts Sam down. "You boys head upstairs and have a bath. You both look like you could use one."

"So do you," said Dean, and remembers to add, "Sir."

"Yes, I'm sure I do." Dad's mouth twists in a little smile, so Dean knows the joke is okay with him.

"Was that a heffalump?" Sam cranes his head back and looks up at Dad, leaning against Dad's leg.

"No, son. That was a hippogriff. Now upstairs, both of you."

When they reach the stairs, Sam stops and turns to Dean. "Piggy-back!"

Dean's shoulders still hurt, his legs too, and he's sleepy. "Hop on," he says, and bends enough so Sammy can reach.

As they make slow progress up the narrow stairs, Sammy puts his face down next to Dean's. "You were right," he says in Dean's ear.

"'Course I was right. Uh...about what?"

"You had it covered," Sammy repeats Dean's words back to him, sounding very certain of it.

His brothers arms go tighter across his chest. They're almost to the top of the stairs, and Dean yawns, feeling the ache in his shoulders.

But Sam feels like no weight at all.

~END


End file.
